


The Sweet Sacrifice of Duty

by NosAstra



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Fade (Dragon Age), Fluff, PTSD, Survivor Guilt, The Nightmare (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 17:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NosAstra/pseuds/NosAstra
Summary: *Major spoilers for Here Lies the Abyss arc*Warden Alistair and Inquisitor Lavellan are helpless to stop Hawke from buying them some time as they escape from The Nightmare in the Fade. It's not the first time someone has thrown their life on the line for him, and it reminds Alistair of another woman far away searching for a cure, a woman who had faced down the Archdemon in the Fifth Blight and struck the final blow - even when neither of them were sure Morrigan's ritual would truly work.---One of my favorite things about seeing Alistair in DAI again was hearing him talk about how much he loved and missed the Hero of Ferelden (Warden-Commander Mahariel in my game). So here's a short piece on the parallels between Alistair and Mahariel & Lavellan and Cullen when it comes to love and the contemplation of sacrifice (halam'shivanas). Enjoy!





	The Sweet Sacrifice of Duty

“Go! I’ll buy you some time!” Cool blue eyes have turned to steel as Hawke stares down the Nightmare behind the Inquisitor. Lavellan looks back at her, panicked, and the hair on her arms tingles at the look in her eyes. _Creators, she’s serious. This is happening._

“No! Hawke, you’re – you’re right,” Alistair huffs out, “Look, the Wardens are to blame for all this – it should be a Warden – “

Hawke’s gaze lands on him sharply as he starts to dig into a more defensive posture. “Maker’s breath, enough with the damn sacrifice talk already!” She takes a deep breath and unsheathes her daggers, the sound of metal scraping against metal sickening Lavellan to her gut. She continues, “A Warden should help _rebuild_. That’s what _you’re_ there for.”

Time seems to slow down as Alistair stares at her, feeling a guilty sort of helplessness as they exchange words with their eyes.

_Go. The Wardens need you. _

_But you can’t – **they** need you… _

_**She** needs you._

Alistair’s lungs feel like they’re full of smoke and it’s like he’s at the top of the tower in Denerim, fighting the Archdemon all over again. Keeping one eye on the beast and another on Mahariel as she charges the beast, two sharp daggers dripping with blood and glinting in the sun. Fighting for their lives, all the while frantically wondering if the ritual actually worked, if he’s really saved her, if he needs to push her out of the way so that he lands the killing blow instead, just in case Morrigan was wrong after all. There’s blood on her face and she cries out as a talon swipes her side – the beast is getting frantic now, and there’s tar-like crimson fluid flowing on the ground. This is it. One final blow. His eyes meet hers for a split second and they share the same thought, but she’s quicker and the last thing he sees is her leaping in the air, daggers aimed for its throat, as Wynne’s healing spell envelops her in a blue-green glow. Uncertainty and dread fills his veins as he watches the blades sink in and – _No!_

_**She** needs you._ Hawke’s eyes insist.

And then they’re all out of time because the Inquisitor has placed a shaky hand on Hawke’s forearm, and they spend one dangerous second exchanging looks that mean volumes in their own rights.

“I’m sorry.” Lavellan’s voice breaks and damn it, the Inquisitor’s voice doesn’t break, but this...

Hawke’s eyes soften imperceptibly. “Don’t be. I need to help make this right,” she affirms.

“Don’t die. I’ll try to find a way to save you. Just. Don’t die,” she begs, unsure of whether or not she can fulfill that promise but knowing full well that she has no say in this – she couldn’t stop Hawke if she tried.

And that’s when the Champion of Kirkwall grins, exposing her canines, and the blood on her face tainted by the sick green glow of the Fade makes her look like a dangerous and feral creature.

“Die? Who said anything about dying?”

A small, scared smile paints Lavellan’s face as she nods and watches Hawke look back towards the Nightmare. Alistair feels sick. There’s no ritual to save her, and blast it all, why isn’t there a way to save her, too? Hawke’s footsteps quicken, she’s gaining momentum, her daggers aimed, glinting in the green sun, blood still dripping down – “WE HAVE TO GO, ALISTAIR!” And he’s running, half-dragged away by the Inquisitor, and he’s running with one eye on the portal and the other on Hawke as she places herself square in the creature’s field of vision, dangling herself in front of its twisted desires so that they can escape. “JUMP!” he hears and he finally looks away just as the creature’s gigantic leg steps forward and blocks her from his sight and – _No! _

He turns and leaps straight off the edge into the green portal in the air.

\---

“One last farewell before you head off to Weisshaupt?” Lavellan asks him, a warm smile on her face.

“Well, I never could resist the temptation of a soft bed and a warm meal. Did you know you have 13 different types of cheeses here?” Alistair grins at her.

“Maker, please tell me you avoided the Orlesian ones with some kind of…mold growing on them?” Cullen asks, his face wrinkling in disgust. “I hear they’re a delicacy, but surely you wouldn’t eat anything else that had mold growing all over it.”

“_Orlesian_ cheese? What do you take me for, Commander? I have _some_ dignity left, albeit a very small shred at this point,” he winks good-naturedly at Lavellan. She and Cullen snort and laughter flows out of all three of them, more relief in the aftermath of being alive and victorious. Well, sort of victorious.

It’s the first time someone on her team has fallen under her watch, under her command. She’s still not sure how to deal with it, not sure if she ever will be able to.

Everyone in the room seems to feel the same thing. “Uh, give my regards to Varric, would you?” Alistair adds softly. “And my…deepest sympathies. I expressed them to him right after – well. Anyway, I’m sure I’m the last person he wants to see right now. Just a reminder of what went wrong, a mistake.”

“Maker, no,” Cullen adds firmly. “Don’t say that,” Lavellan echoes in turn.

The three are silent for a moment. “I still don’t understand why she did it,” Alistair whispers. Cullen’s eyes cast down in sorrow. He knew Hawke was always one to put herself in front of danger before anyone else, knew that even from the little he saw of her in Kirkwall, but still…

“Halam’shivanas,” Lavellan responds softly, so reverently it tugs at Cullen’s heart.

Alistair’s ears perk up and he looks at her questioningly, “That sounds familiar… What does it mean?”

She looks back up, almost surprised that she said the words out loud. Eyes flitting between the two men, still a little self-conscious of speaking Elven around humans, she says simply, “Um. Halam’shivanas. It means – how can I say this? Like…the sacred sacrifice that duty requires of us all. A sacrifice that binds us and yet is bound by our very willing nature itself. A gentle demand that the world makes of us that we are all too eager to answer. …For we know no other response.”

Her hands grow cold and she wraps them around her waist, hugging herself, hyperaware of Cullen’s proximity. She’s tried not to think about what this world might demand of her to save it, and how that would surely tear her away from him, but her heart hurts at how quickly she would throw herself in front of the Breach itself to save him. She knows he would do it, too. But they both know she’s better equipped, that it’s her who will have to answer that call when it comes. Cullen shifts awkwardly next to her, and she knows that he’s thinking the same thing. Knows it won’t stop him from trying to save her anyway.

“Halam’shivanas,” Alistair repeats softly. There’s a fond, yet pained look on his face. He lets out a breath that sounds like a soft laugh and says, “That’s what it was. I remember Mahariel saying that before.”

“Halam’shivanas,” he repeats, as if chewing on the word could digest it away from existence or at the very least fill the sorrow-filled air in the room.

“Have you heard from her since the first letter?” Lavellan asks gently.

“No,” Alistair’s smile is sad, but grateful for the concern. “But I highly doubt my love has time to write me extensive love letters in the midst of all that danger,” he smirks. “Not that she’s not capable of it, of course, but describing the way my hair glints in the sunlight could take at least five pages, and her hand would surely get sore what with all the stabbing she gets done during the day.” Cullen barks out a laugh, pleased and admiring, which Lavellan joins in on. Alistair’s smirk also cracks into a tension-defusing chuckle, and when she sneaks a peek at him in between the laughter, she indeed sees how his hair almost sparkles in the little bit of light peeking in through Cullen’s roof and how he looks so…positively young. When she first met him, he had the eyebags of Wardens she’d seen before from afar, and she often spent nights wondering what a Warden life entailed, the kinds of burdens people like them had to endure with the future of the world riding on their backs. But now, Alistair’s head is tipped back in laughter and his eyes are bright and full of love and mischief, and she’s so overwhelmingly happy for him – this young human man who has found a part of this world that isn’t filled with blight and darkspawn, with responsibility and hardship, with death and blood, and he held that person so dear to his heart that it must hurt how brightly their love burned for each other. So brightly that she can’t even imagine what that final battle must have been like for them both. And yet…they both survived. A young human Warden and a bright Dalish elf.

“Well then, with all the time you seem to have on your hands now, I say it’s only fair _you_ write _her_ extensive love letters instead,” Cullen chuckles, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

She catches the glimpse and holds it for a second, smiling at the warmth in his gaze. A young human Commander and a bright Dalish elf. Would history be so kind as to repeat itself? Or were these all their last moments together before one of them faced a lifetime of heartbreak?

“ – you think she might find it romantic if I compared how happy she makes me to the finest cheeses of Ferelden?”

Cullen looks back at him, playfully alarmed and exclaims, “Maker, I hope not, the poor woman! She saved the world and you’re comparing her to _cheese_?!” He glances back at Lavellan, questions in his eyes.

_Are you okay?_

Lavellan smiles. _I’m fine. You’re here._

Alistair loudly snorts in laughter, grabbing the attention of both Commander and Inquisitor, who start cackling in turn and for a moment, the room just seems like three old friends laughing at a bad joke in the middle of their respectively normal lives.

Later, when Alistair waves goodbye and rides out the gates of Skyhold, Lavellan lingers behind and watches as his figure becomes blurry in the distance. She remembers the words Warden-Commander Mahariel wrote to her in the letter that’s still sitting on her desk upstairs, left there from the night before Adamant.

_“Please take care of him. I trust his compassion and his strength above any other’s. _

_…And I would not go through such effort to overcome our Callings only to lose him to your Inquisition.” _

_He is not lost, hahren. _She thinks._ As long as he has you in his heart, I doubt he will ever be lost._

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
> Halam'shivanas = "the sweet sacrifice of duty"  
Hahren = "elder"; used as a term of respect
> 
> \---  
I hope you enjoyed this small piece! I haven't posted fic on here in years, but I'm on another Dragon Age playthrough and found myself ruminating on characters and their backstories way too much - to the point where it's probably not healthy. So I figured I'd share some of it with you all. <3
> 
> I couldn't stop thinking about Alistair's willingness to sacrifice himself in the Fade instead of Hawke, and how my Hawke would absolutely not allow it, not even if Andraste herself tried to stop it. It made me think of the possible kind of PTSD that Alistair (and likely all the Grey Wardens) have at this point, and the kind of survivor's guilt that might accompany that. And of course, it made me think of one of the biggest decisions of sacrifice that Alistair likely ever had to contemplate - whether to sacrifice himself to kill the Archdemon in Denerim or to go through with Morrigan's plan to save him and Mahariel both (because you know he's not letting Mahariel sacrifice herself). But there would have been no way to know for sure if the ritual had worked anyway, and just imagining the kind of dread that they both must have felt as Mahariel dropped the final blow instead of Alistair - ugh, the feels.
> 
> Also, there's no implied character death warning, because in the words of Hawke, "Die? Who said anything about dying?" I'll be exploring her fate in the Fade in a soon-to-come fic.


End file.
